CONSULTATION over the biggest ever shake-up of East Lancashire hospitals is "meaningless", "seriously flawed" and must be scrapped, a health watchdog said today.

In an attack on managers, the area's hospital Patient and Public Involvement Forum blasted the consultation as a "wasted opportunity" which had "failed to engage the public".

A six-page report by the forum which has a statutory duty to scrutinise East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has been sent to managers, the Department of Health, the area's MPs and councils.

It states: "The flaws in this public consultation are so great as to make the whole process meaningless and any conclusions drawn from it unacceptable."

The 12-week consultation, which finishes on July 10, proposes major changes to what services are run at East Lancashire's hospitals.

These include moving most pre-booked operations from Blackburn to Burnley, axing key women's and children's services at one of the hospitals and Burnley General losing its blue-light A&E department.

Two options have been put forward yet both contain most of the controversial changes and only give the public a choice over which hospital gets the women's and children's services. The forum document systematically picks over what is says are serious failings, from the initial ideas put forward to huge public controversy last October to the launch of the formal consultation on March 21.

They said it was "indicative of the failure to engage the public" that just 0.2 per cent of East Lancashire adults had responded. It says: l Bosses failed to ask the public for ideas ahead of October's "pre-consultation" options.

l When these four options were announced, three were "obvious non-starters" that made a "mockery of the process".

l Bosses failed to send a 16-page newspaper-style document to "most households" before public meetings to discuss the plans, meaning attendance was poor.

l These meetings were "at inappropriate venues and inconvenient times" nine of them at 6pm, one at 2pm, two at 1.30pm and two at 10am.

l Efforts to let people know of the meetings were "inadequate".

l The document "resembled a free newspaper" and many "probably discarded it".

l Managers had not been "proactive" to get the message through to hard to reach groups. An "open invitation" for bosses to talk to groups was "not enough".

l Despite doctors having concerns these were not made clear in the document which also lacked "full information", for example on the number of patients affected by the plans.

l The lack of difference between the two options offered "no real choice" which was contrary to the Government's code of practice on consultations.

The forum also blasted the Trust for a video shown at the public meetings which The Lancashire Evening Telegraph revealed featured the wife of its vice-chairman purporting to be an ordinary patient.

It said doctors who appeared in it were "chosen because they support the options put forward" meaning the public were "unreasonably expected" to come up with counter arguments to the "one sided" information given.

However Trust project director Val Bertenshaw said the Trust would argue the points made in a private response to the forum.

To read the full report, click here.